New car sales continue to slide

July results show a slowing market, with home-grown Commodore edging overall lead.

New car sales continue to slide

04 August 2011Matt Campbell

Tough economic times and the Japanese natural disaster have been blamed for yet another slow month for new car sales.

Official July sales results from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries show that 80,991 new vehicles were sold during the month - a drop of 1.7 per cent on July 2010's figures (82,376). Overall sales are down 5.9 per cent on last year's numbers.

FCAI acting chief executive Steve Payne says the supply constraints imposed by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami earlier this year are expected to ease in the coming months.

"The supply of vehicles and components from Japan following the earthquake and tsunami in March has improved, however sales of several popular models were still affected by supply constraints," Payne says, referring to models such as Toyota's Corolla which has seen a drop of 18.8 per cent in 2011 due to the supply problems.

Payne says the slump in sales shows that consumers are "continuing to delay new vehicle purchases", with private sales having dropped by 8.0 per cent compared to last year. But he remained cautiously optimistic, saying the FCAI expects "annual sales to be around 1 million vehicles for 2011".

The top-selling car for the month was Holden's Commodore (3551 units sold), which clawed back the overall top spot from Mazda's 3 small car (3290 sales) - year-to-date figures show the Commodore is ahead of the Mazda3 by just 81 sales (24,583 vs 24,502). Toyota's HiLux claimed third place in July with 3147 sales, while Holden's locally-built Cruze small sedan accounted for 3123.

Luxury SUV sales have proved to be the strongest segment in 2011, thanks to increased competition which has lead to better value for money. Sales have increased 17.4 per cent year-to-date, with top-sellers for July including Volkswagen's new Touareg (279 units), BMW's updated X3 (258) and Jeep's Grand Cherokee (255).